As many students may have noticed, a health survey designed to provide information regarding student’s health habits was sent to 5,000 ISU undergraduate students last week.

The survey poses questions regarding alcohol and drug consumption, prescription drugs, physical and emotional health and diet and exercise, among other topics.

“This survey is going to help us know what health problems our students have and enable us to help with those problems,” said Lauri Dusselier, program coordinator for the health center.

Dusselier said the survey was sent out to 25 percent of the undergraduate population and the recipients were chosen randomly. Although the survey has been conducted in the past, the American College Health Association is taking steps to improve the student survey.

“The survey was sent to two groups of undergraduate students because the ACHA is making changes to some of the questions and ISU was chosen as a school to be part of the pilot study for the new questions,” Dusselier said.

She explained that the survey will still gather the same information, but that the questions were changed to be more effective.

“It gives us very good information about the health of our students,” Dusselier said.

Raymond Rodriguez, program coordinator at the student health center, said the study is done for two reasons.

“First, this gives us a good picture of what issues need to be addressed on campus in terms of health,” Rodriguez said. “We know what we see in terms of clinical visits, but that’s a select group of students.”

Rodriguez cites the second reason as being something students should do because there are very few things as important as a person’s health.

Both Rodriguez and Dusselier encouraged students to complete the survey, and, because of its importance to students, rewards for completed surveys are being given. Students who complete the survey will be entered into a drawing for three $200 gift certificates to the ISU Bookstore.

The survey is estimated to take only 20 to 30 minutes to complete.